MCHD boards missing

Published 7:00 pm, Friday, September 8, 2006

Montgomery County Hospital District officials have sent their second letter to the Houston Fire Department in recent years asking for the equipment back and are waiting for a response.

It's a problem the Montgomery County Hospital District has battled for years and one that plagues other first responder agencies, according to MCHD Chief Administrative Officer Allen Johnson. But it's also a problem that seems to have no easy solution.

Johnson and other MCHD officials have known that EMS backboards - sturdy plastic boards meant to physically stabilize trauma patients on the ground before they can be placed on a gurney - have often made their way onto other ambulances for sometime, but a newspaper photo last week gave them visual proof.

The photo, published in a Houston newspaper, shows a Houston Fire Department EMS paramedic carrying a red backboard. The lettering on the red backboard states "Montgomery County Hospital District."

"It's a chronic problem in EMS," Johnson said about backboards disappearing. "The backboard gets loaded up on a (emergency room) dock, and an ambulance will take the first available one. We've had calls from agencies all over the state who have come across our backboards, and we ask them to return them."

A year ago, Johnson said, the Department of State Health Services sent a letter to other first responder agencies telling them to return the EMS backboards.

"It really is a widespread problem and practice," he said.

MCHD has purchased around 550 backboards since January 2004 at a cost of nearly $39,000, putting the cost of each unit around $71. The district has just placed a "huge order" for another 600 to 800 backboards and has received 40 from the Southeast Texas Trauma Regional Advisory Council for each of the past five years.

The SETTRAC, part of a state-mandated regionalized trauma system to organize local systems, started "flooding the market" with newer, plastic backboards five years ago in an effort to help trauma systems phase out older models that caused problems because of the materials used in constructing them, according to Executive Director David Rives.

"We distribute them to participating members of SETTRAC," Rives said. "This year is our fifth year, and we've distributed right at 5,000."

The boards just "naturally migrate" when multiple agencies are on a trauma scene or unloading patients at hospitals. Rives said he's had calls from agencies as far away as North Carolina telling him they have a lime-green SETTRAC board.

The Montgomery County Hospital District instructs its EMS paramedics that they are to pick up only EMS backboards and not to take any belonging to other agencies, Johnson said.

"Our courier visits hospitals each day (to retrieve boards)," he said. "It's not like we're not paying attention to this. We have a standing policy not to use other agencies' boards. We use SETTRAC and MCHD boards only. If we see a neighbor's backboard, we get it back to them."

No other agency within SETTRAC has a similar policy "that I'm aware of," Rives said.

MCHD sent the Houston Fire Department a letter a couple of years ago, according to Johnson, asking its officials to "refrain from taking our equipment," he said. "We just sent them another letter to remind them to tell their EMS people not to take our backboards."

The first letter brought "some positive response," Johnson said. "But if you don't follow up, you have to stay on it. It seems like they did return some boards. Usually, they'll use it again and drop it at the hospital so we can get it."

When asked whether HFD has a policy in place to keep its EMS paramedics from picking up backboards belonging to other first responder agencies, spokeswoman Karen Cambias said, "I didn't know there was a problem."

Cambias also was asked whether HFD has a policy about returning backboards belonging to other agencies, but she did not call back with that information.

State law regulates ambulances to have two backboards at all times, and, in the case of HFD, it's not uncommon for ambulances to be sent out on another call before they can get back to the station and get another board, Rives said.

"They have to pick up another board where they can get it," he said. "Most EMS's will pick up the best-looking board there."

Johnson has made the case to other agencies that the dollars add up when backboards go off in someone else's ambulances instead of where they belong.

"I've pointed out to my colleagues who don't think it's a problem to steal someone else's backboard that they would think it's a real problem to take someone else's $24,000 heart monitor," he said. "We don't share those. But they think nothing of taking someone else's $100 backboard. When I explain that to people, it gets their attention. We would love to get our equipment back."

By the numbers

The amount of money the Montgomery County Hospital District has spent on backboards for EMS ambulances in recent years:

2004 — $16,926.50

2005 — $18,040.90

2006 — $4,025.50

Total — $38,992.90

MCHD officials estimate about 350 to 400 backboards have gone missing from EMS ambulances and may be with other first responder agencies and private ambulance services.